Marie Cookpad

  About six months ago I had bought a couple of racks of lamb at Costco, which were marked down for some reason. They looked fine so I brought them home, repackaged them and froze them to use at a later date.  This weekend I thawed one out and roasted it for our Sunday lunch.   It was absolutely beautiful. I can't think why it had been reduced, perhaps the original packaging had been punctured or some such. In any case there was nothing wrong with it at all.   Lamb is not something we ever ate when I was growing up. Mom did try to cook some lamb chops once, but they were not popular with any of us.  I suspect strongly that they were mutton and not lamb as they smelled like she was burning a pair of mittens when she was cooking them!   When mom was in the hospital having my brother (over 60 years ago!) she had remembered having a lamb stew and she always talked about how delicious it was.  Until moving here to the UK, chops that smelt like burnt mittens...

  I confess that lamb was not something I had ever eaten prior to moving here to the UK. My mother did cook lamb chops once when I was a teenager, but they smelled like burning mittens so none of us would eat them.  I strongly suspect it was mutton and not lamb.  In any case, the smell was enough to put us all off for a very long time.   My mother often spoke of a lamb stew that she had enjoyed in the hospital when she was having my brother.  It was a taste memory that she carried with her all the days of her  life.  My brother just turned 60 last week, so that was a very long time to be thinking about what something tasted like.   I know all about that.  The summer before 12th grade I went on a school exchange trip and we stayed at Carlton University in Ottawa.  Each night we were taken to a restaurant in Ottawa called "The Cascade Restaurant."  The very first night I ordered the Barbequed Chicken.  It was so good I ordered it...

  With Saint Patrick's Day being on Sunday I thought it would be fun to make a smaller batch of Irish Stew for the smaller family.  This recipe will serve 3, or 2 people generously.  Or two people on the day and one with the leftovers the day after.     Its a simple and yet attractive stew, using simple methods and simple ingredients, because lets face it . . .  the Irish were basically a very poor people, a humble people, without artifice, and many did not have stoves or ovens, but cooked over an open fire on the hearth.   This is a recipe I adapted from one I found in this book.  It is originally meant to feed four people generously.  This is a great book by the way.  I have had it for a few years now and every recipe tried has been a real winner. Its from the Love Food people.   All you need for it is some stewing lamb  . . .  you could use neck fillets if you wanted to, I just used cubed stewing lamb I got at the ...